


Finality Without Fanfare

by Kalaiscope



Series: Various Leif Works [3]
Category: Road to Folkvangr, Tales from Cloverreach/The Grimalkin Oath
Genre: Gen, lots of angst and burned houses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 09:03:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1340749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalaiscope/pseuds/Kalaiscope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leif and Bragi make one final goodbye to their home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finality Without Fanfare

**Author's Note:**

> This is an ambiguous timeline, but I like to think its canon. That little wooden figure always has been more trouble than it's worth. Besides, Leif needed to make sure his scarf wasn't still there.

The house is empty. Everything is empty. From the scrubbed-clean floors, the empty hearth, to Leif's heart as he stands in the middle of what was, for a very short time, the closest thing he had to a home.

Someone pads up behind him, deliberately audible so as not to startle. He doesn't turn though, doesn't make any outward sign of recognition, just keeps standing with his paws wrapped around himself. 

Above him, a sigh. "We'll be back," Bragi tells him softly, but there is no conviction in his voice. The words are empty. Leif doesn't reply, only turns and buries his face in the snowshoe's broad chest. It's a familiar gesture, a comfort-seeking one, that has been used by the both of them many times before. Large paws rest on his back, cradling him close. He doesn't cry. Not this time. Just breathes in his partner's scent and tries to rewind the memories playing in his head. 

"We can't leave yet," he says at last, and Bragi makes a rumbling sound of surprise. "Soon. I jus'... I got one more thing I gotta do."

He tilts his head up, trying to implore with his eyes. Bragi meets him with a pensive gaze. Then he nods. "I understand." And that is that. Communication in just a few words. Something they've learned in the few, meaningful months they spent together, here, in this home, hidden away from all the suffering.

It's unspoken, but Bragi comes along. They take their belongings with them, what little they have, as they follow the winding trail down into Gweillan. It's dangerous, this journey, and neither of them plans to stay long. But there is something Leif desperately needs. One last loose end that cries in his mind to be tied up and put to rest. He won't be, and hasn't been, able to rest until it is completed.

The roads are familiar. The scenery is not. They take what should have been back alleys and hidden routes, but all they find is a trail of crumbling buildings and fire-gutted homes. There may be parts of the kingdom still intact, but this quarter has not been spared. Even the tavern is empty and collapsing.

Leif half expects the house he is looking for to be nothing but charred foundations by now, but it turns out to be surprisingly recognizable. The front door is gone and the bay window is just a dark mouth lined with broken glass teeth, but only part of the roof has crumbled and the walls are stone anyway. They easily withstood any fire. 

Inside, it's a little worse. Their paws kick up small clouds of dust and ash that swirl in dancing pattern through the beams of light streaming in from the open ceiling. There is rubble where the kitchen should be. The window seat looks stark and cold without the cushions that should soften it.

Everything is silent, and empty. The only furniture left is either too large or too simple to have been desirable to the raiders. The kitchen table, broken in the middle and missing a leg. Kithaya's ancient armchair, the one deemed overstuffed and horrendously sore on the eyes, toppled in front of the fireplace, half covered in debris from the roof. A few broken chairs. The tall coat hanger Leif made for them.

For a moment he is struck with a vision, a memory of snow and laughter. Tumbling in through the door with soaked fur and numbed toes, blissfully satisfied with the day's work. Curling in front of a hot fire. A small, warm body against his side. And then it's gone, replaced by the eerie quiet of what is now an abandoned shell. He breathes in, harsh, fighting emotion, and a sneaky paw finds grip on his own. Bragi doesn't speak.

He only gives himself a second or two more to compose himself, and then turns his attention to the back rooms. Here, things are at least safe from the falling roof. Bragi trails behind him, still making no commentary of his own, letting Leif take the lead. One room. Empty, save for the cracked frame of a bed. Even the rug is gone. It hadn't even been particularly valuable. Leif moves on.

The room he comes to next, and the one he intended to search from the beginning, holds an empty dresser and a shattered mirror. The bed frame in this room is intact, but again, bare. Leif goes directly to the dresser, and Bragi waits in the door frame, listening for any hint of danger. 

Predictably, the top drawers are all empty. There hadn't really been anything there in the first place. At least, nothing of value. But the last drawer, the one at the bottom, holds a few ripped and crumpled papers. Leif picks them up with shaking paws, eyes scanning the images. Charcoal, pen, watercolor, all smudged or faded or blotted by water. Pictures of landscapes. Blueprints. Ideas, designs. Portraits of cats, most laughing, but many more left unfinished and featureless. He carefully smooths each one as he pulls it out, and lays them out on the floor.

At the very back, behind the papers, he finds something else. It's battered and chipped and smudged with char, but he recognizes it anyway. He carved out every detail of it with painstaking care, he could never forget it. Except...

He takes a small knife out of the bag he carries, the one holding all the things one might need to begin a new life, and cradles the small statuette in one paws. With small, precise strokes, he carves into the blank ash wood. A face. One he will never, ever forget, so long as he lives, if he has anything to say about it. 

It doesn't take long. When he's finished, he stands, and stows both the statue and the knife back in his bag. Then he turns to Bragi, who has been watching him sidelong. They don't need to speak. Bragi just nods, and together they head out. 

Their work is done. They don't belong here anymore.


End file.
